“Sperm whale opening it's huge mouth, Ogasawara Islands, Japan. Sperm whales are the biggest carnivorous animals on the planet. Each teeth in the mouth of adult specimen weights more than 1 kilogram. Interestingly enough that modern marine biologists believe that these teeth despite being fearsome play little role in capturing and eating giant squid – with their main function being mainly ritual aggression between males!”. (Photo by Alexander Safonov)

A street vendor wearing a Santa Claus costume sits next to a girl at the boulevard of Sabana Grande in Caracas, Venezuela December 19, 2016. (Photo by Marco Bello/Reuters)

A visitor holds up her toy bunny to the aquarium glass in front of Aurora the Russian polar bear at the Sao Paulo Aquarium in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Thursday, April 16, 2015. (Photo by Andre Penner/AP Photo)

In this November 19, 2015 photo, Ester Melendez feeds banana porridge to her nine-month-old daughter Dina, in Pichiquia, an Ashaninka indigenous community in Peru's Junin region. Incursions and assaults by loggers, miners, colonists and leftist guerrillas have reduced the lands of the Ashaninka people in the Peruvian Amazon, leaving many of the 97,000 members of the group malnourished, despite efforts by the government and independent organizations to help. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

A unidentified woman protests at Broad Street for the pending arrival of Vice President Mike Pence at the Union League, in Philadelphia, Monday, July 23, 2018. Dozens of demonstrators dressed as characters from the novel-turned-TV series “The Handmaid's Tale” descended on downtown Philadelphia to protest Pence’s visit. (Photo by Jose F. Moreno/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP Photo)

As the world marks the International Day of the Girl Child, women's rights activists point to progress on a wide array of issues but say more needs to be done to protect girls from child marriage, sexual assault and other forms of exploitation. Here is a selection of pictures showing the daily lives of girls across the globe, all taken by female Associated Press photojournalists. Here: In this December 14, 2015, file photo, a young clown rides in the back of a car following a procession to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. Hundreds belonging to various clown associations made their annual pilgrimage to the Basilica to pay their respects to the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's patron saint. (Photo by Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo)

An Iran fan attends the Russia 2018 World Cup Group B football match between Morocco and Iran at the Saint Petersburg Stadium in Saint Petersburg on June 15, 2018. (Photo by Dylan Martinez/Reuters)

In this Tuesday, March 12, 2019 photo, a visitor takes part in an immersive experience showing visitors how dogs see from inside the head of a dog at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. A new exhibit at a Los Angeles museum examines the relationship between dogs and humans and explores why the two species seem to think so much alike and get along so well. “Dogs! A Science Tail” opens Saturday, March 16, 2019, at the California Science Center. (Photo by Richard Vogel/AP Photo)